


Through the Dead Forest, You Can See A Bored Time Lord

by l-ouresdeLuna (facemyJam)



Series: Rose Stays [5]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Doctor's POV mostly, F/M, Gen, Post-Episode AU: s02e13 Doomsday, Short Story, from the other side of the rift, it's not long and it's not much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 18:53:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11973534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/facemyJam/pseuds/l-ouresdeLuna
Summary: A short look into the life of the Doctor as he takes the slow path getting back to his Universe and Rose featuring a pregnant Jackie Tyler and an awkward Pete.





	Through the Dead Forest, You Can See A Bored Time Lord

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to get this finished and posted a week ago, but the Hurricane Harvey hit and even though I got through it unscathed, it's been chaotic. Y'all, if you CAN help out in any way, please do, some people lost everything and it'll take YEARS to get it back. I've never seen a hurricane this bad since Ike.

Five unnecessary ( in his opinion ) slaps to the face, fourteen eardrum killing shrieks ( also unnecessary ), seven scoldings ( he’s told her various times that Time Lords need less sleep than humans to no avail ), twelve piles of alien scraps to sift through ( most of it came from his Universes Torchwood which was handy ), and thirty two nights of building later and he had finally done it. The Dimension Cannon, for lack of better words, was completed. And not a moment too soon, seeing as how a  _ very _ pregnant Jackie Tyler was marching through the lab, the very picture of a Valkyrie on a warpath.

 

“So sorry, Jacks,” He tells her. “But your tongue lashing will have to wait until I get back.” And with that he slaps the button strapped to the harness he rigged up that connected him to the Dimension Cannon. He couldn’t even enjoy the look of shock on her face before he was flung through the walls.

 

He’s dizzy when he lands, he’ll probably have to fiddle with the stability matrix again, the Durium core most likely came loose again. He’ll have to work out a container for it if others were to use the Cannon as well.

 

Someone bumps into him and it’s then that he realises he materialised in a room full of people. Cram jam full, in fact. Oh, he’s never thinking that again.

 

“Excuse me,” he says to the bloke next to him. “Where am I?” The rough landing was wreaking havoc on his senses.

 

“The Library,” the man tells him before stepping on a transmat pad and disappearing.

 

“The Library?” He thinks aloud. “Now why does that sound so familiar?”

 

He wades through the crowd, or more like he was pushed from person to person, until he’s standing in a small pocket of free space.

 

“D-D-D-D-,” the man next to him stutters looking over at something in another room.

 

The Doctor looks over as well to spot the back of a redhead, with a small tuft of familiar blonde hair peeking over the redheads shoulder.

 

“Rose?” he whispers, too low for anyone but him to hear.

 

It’s then that something twinges and he feels echoing presence of another telepath bump against his mind. Or, at least, he  _ thinks  _ it’s another telepath. The signature is faint, but it feels tempting.

 

He looks over for that tuft of blonde, but it and the redhead is gone. So is the stuttering man, probably to the transmat pad. So he might as well go and follow that tantalising song rubbing against his mind.

 

He goes down a twist of expansive corridors lined with bookshelves and as he passes a window it comes to him.

 

“Oh! The Library! Of course!” He grins as he looks out at the many different buildings housing the millions of books this world had to offer. “But what was Rose doing here? How did she get here? Unless…,” he trails off as he thinks it over. 

 

Could she have worked out how to fly the TARDIS? Or did he input the wrong date coordinates and land later into her timeline, one that possibly already has him in it? But wouldn’t he feel himself if he were here? Maybe he just calculated wrongly, set the TARDIS finding coordinates too early or something. But then again, he had never been here, so how is it that he wound up here?

 

The telepathic signature broke through his thoughts and he was off again to follow it down one final turn to see nobody on the small balcony. All that was there was a notebook and a- a sonic screwdriver?! What was that doing there!?

 

He picks it up and turns it over in his hands, testing the weight. It feels like someone added some nifty little settings to it. He scans it with his own and- that was odd.

 

“Someone’s put a neural relay on this,” he says aloud. He opens the sonic to see two green lights left on the outlook. “But where to put this?” He looks down at the notebook it was resting on to see a number. 900. Maybe it was a page number?

 

He flips through the book, noting the sloppy handwriting interspersed with neat script and then he gets to page 900. It’s all but blank. 

 

“Go to the data core? Well, that’s a bit-” he stops short. This was a neural relay, meaning this was someone’s neural energy. If he went to the data core of this planet, the person would be saved! He pockets the notebook and runs he way back through the corridors.

 

“Stay with me! You can do it, stay with me! Come on, you and me, one last run!” He shouts knowing that whoever this person was, they couldn’t hear him.

 

He jumps onto the platform just as it starts to descend, the page also having given him directions. He thought it odd, though. Someone clearly knew he’d be here in this exact spot in this exact time to save this person, whoever they were.

 

He exits the platform and runs over to the data core barely making it in time to plug the sonic in, the green light flickering worryingly.

 

_ “Thank you, sweetie.” _

 

He feels something caress his mind and he leans in to it, not having had this kind of contact in a good long while, but it’s gone in the next second.

 

He wants to cry, to shout, to do anything to fill the empty space in his hearts and mind. He would take the notebook out again to read through it to see who this person he just saved is, but the page he looked at worried him. It wasn’t written in English or any other Galactic Standard. It was written in Gallifreyan and he was scared. So, so, scared to find out who this person was who knew his native language.

 

His wristwatch gave out a ding that signalled the Cannon was warmed up so he could make the return journey. He pushed the button again without much thought, knowing that he still had a lot of work left to do. Not only did the Cannon not work properly, but he had basically done the equivalent of slamming a door in Jackie Tyler’s face. And one does not slam a door in Jackie Tyler’s face and live to tell the tale.

 

He could still feel her handprint on his face from back when he was all ears and leather. Could still feel the sting of it if he concentrated enough. Not that he did, well, not on purpose.

 

He stumbles a little as he settles back into the lab space Pete gave him. Being in close relation with the wife of the Director of Torchwood had its perks!

 

He barely has a chance to inhale before his head is forcibly sent to the left. Ah, looks like Jackie was switching up her slapping hands.

 

“Ow!” he yells at her putting a hand on his hurt cheek.

 

“An’ there’s more where that came from if you do that again, mister!” Jackie yells at him, one hand waving in his face, the other protectively covering her baby bump.

 

“Right,” he says unbuckling himself from the harness. He’ll have to adjusts the straps to sit more comfortably on him, or maybe he could forego the straps for another design.

 

“Well?” Jackie screams out. “Did you see her? Was she okay? Is she at the flat?”

 

“Erm,” he says pulling on his ear. “She- Well, the thing is-”

 

“Great!” Jackie interrupts. “All this effort put in and the thing doesn’t even bleedin’ work!”

 

“No, it works.  _ Well, _ I say it works. Thing is, it got me to the right Universe, just the wrong time and world. It looks like I’ll have to adjust the link coordinates and find a container for the- Jackie?” He looks up from his worktable to find himself alone.

 

“Right, well, back to work then,” he sniffs out, ignoring the notebook burning a hole in his jacket pocket.

 

\--

 

Earlier than he wanted to, the Doctor was forced from his lab by Mickey and Jake.

 

“Come on, boss, you know Jackie’ll do you in if you’re late for dinner,” Mickey tells him. The Doctor just grumbles, forcing his stomach to quiet so it doesn’t give him away.

 

“I was almost done isolating the frequency in the coding that-”

 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Mickey interrupts. “You can do that tomorrow.” He’s shoved into the back of Jake’s car and tries not to pout. By the smirk on Mickey’s face, he doesn’t think he succeeded.

 

It’s amazing what five months standing still will do to a person. He can remember Rose teasing him about getting a mortgage and a house with curtains. Back then he shivered at the thought of it. And then shivered again at the thought of it with Rose in the mix.

 

He sighs as he straps himself in to head back to Pete’s Estate. Once it was a playground for adventure, but now it just reminded him of Rose and how he had left her all alone. He used to tease her for her poor human reflexes, but he was the one who had slipped.

 

If Pete hadn’t caught him, he would’ve been lost to the void, leaving Rose alone in a whole different way. She wouldn’t have ever known what happened to him, or to her family. She wouldn’t have been able to do anything but watch him die. As it were, she watched him fall, and that in itself was enough nightmare material to last the rest of his regeneration's.

 

That lost look on her face, the terror in her eyes; he could still see her hand twitch as if he to reach out for him. Her screaming his name had kept him awake and motivated throughout the weeks and months he’s been here. If he got back to her- no,  _ when _ he got back to her,  he would make sure she never screamed his name in terror again.

 

“Doctor?” Mickey called out. The Doctor looked up to see they had arrived.

 

“You okay, Doc?” Jake asked, reminiscent of Jack’s way of saying it.

 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he tells them struggling with unbuckling himself. He could hear them two sharing a look but ignored it. 

 

_ “I’m always alright.” _

 

He could remember a time when he would say that and look into Rose’s disbelieving yet sympathetic eyes. Whereas he could tell both Mickey and Jake were shaking their heads and passing off his distress as some Time Lord alienness.

 

Jackie greeted them at the door, her smile dimmed somewhat but the Doctor could tell it was genuine.

 

“Just in time,” she tells them. “I was thinking you weren’t successful at prodding this one out of his lab. Like a kiddie at Christmas, you were, when Pete first showed it to you.” She grabs him by the elbow and drags him inside, straight through to the dining room.

 

“I’ve never had a proper lab aboard the TARDIS, She was afraid I’d blow something up,” the Doctor defended himself. 

 

“That’s not reassuring, Doctor,” Pete says from where he’s sat at the head of the table.

 

“What about that one room with all those broken toasters?” Mickey pipes up as he takes a seat.

 

“Those weren’t broken!” The Doctor states. “They were just re-purposed.” He sniffs and then looks down at the delicious looking food on his plate. He eyes it warily.

 

“No, you daft plum, I didn’t make it,” Jackie tells him, knowing exactly what he was thinking. “And for your information, I am a  _ great  _ cook.”

 

Mickey choked with a snort on the chicken he had stuffed in his mouth at that. He quickly drank some water and coughed into his hand, looking nonplussed at the glaring blonde to his left.

 

“You see the match last night?” Jake asks Pete as a way to change the subject, which Pete gladly took.

 

The Doctor inwardly sighed as he came to the realization that this was his life now. A glaring pregnant Jackie Tyler and uncomfortable topic transitions. He itched to run, to breathe in a new planet’s air, to have a familiar hand in his. He wanted to look over to see the teasing spark in her eyes and her tongue touched grin. He ached to banter with her, to teach her an unfamiliar word and see her conquer it.

 

He excused himself from the room after two bites of chicken, the food tasting bland as his thoughts turned depressing. He barely heard Jackie claim to have made banana pudding, but he was already up the staircase and out on the roof before he gave her words any thought. It wasn’t like his stomach could take anything right then anyways.

 

Rose would’ve called him mopey in his previous body and pouty in his current one. This is what he thought of as he stared up at the stars, looked at all the planets and galaxies he would never reach. Pete’s World was similar to the other Universe in most things, but the one that separated them the most in the Doctor’s eyes were the stars. He hadn’t noticed his first time here, but now that he was stuck on the slow path, he had time to look at the details, to see what he had missed beforehand.

 

It was all achingly normal,  _ well _ , as normal as his life could ever get. Waking up everyday to go to the same place everyday to do the same work  _ everyday _ , it was not what he was cut out for. It wasn’t what he was used to, and it  _ definitely  _ wasn’t what he wanted. Being landlocked again, it was torture.

 

“Jackie told me you were unsuccessful today,” Pete voiced from behind him.

 

“Not completely,” the Doctor answers back, not turning away from the stars.

 

“Oh?”

 

“Right Universe, wrong time and place. I’ll need to fine tune some things. You get anymore space junk?” He takes a quick glance at the man who could’ve been Rose’s father.

 

“All we had, you’ve sifted through. Most of the rubble is leftover Cybermen parts.” Pete sighs as he leans his elbows on the roofs balcony railing.

 

The silence is thick with unasked and unanswered questions. Even this was routine. Pete would come up here to find the Doctor every other night stargazing and they would make small talk about the day while the questions Pete wanted to ask, whether about Rose or about the Doctor, went unsaid. And the Doctor never had the courage to bring it up himself or tell the man to spit out his questions. It hurt enough to think of it on his own, actually saying Rose’s name aloud would be pure torture.

 

The Doctor rubs his brow as he sighs. “I just don’t know what could’ve gone wrong. I thought I calibrated the Cannon perfectly. And I checked it at least fifty times!”

 

“What was the wrong place and time?” Pete asks him not fully turning his head from where he looked out over London.

 

“I landed at The Library, the planet, not the-” the Doctor waved his hand to symbolize a regular library. “And I’m not sure of the time, the Cannon still needs to be stabilized more, my senses weren’t able to get the Time.”

 

“What makes you think it was the wrong place?”

 

“Because,” the Doctor explains, spluttering. “It just- R- She couldn’t have. The TARDIS wouldn’t have been able to- to-” he comes to a stop as an idea occurs to him. “ _ Unless! _ ” He runs to the roof door and sprints out the house, barely stopping to shout a happy ‘I GOT IT!’ at Jackie before he’s out the gates and rounding the turn down the gravel road.

 

He matches pace for pace, the car Pete’s driving; Jackie rolled down the window and is currently yelling at him, either to get in the car or to explain himself, but he can’t hear over the double beating of his heart and the hope that he’s right.  _ Rassilon _ , he hopes he’s right.

 

\--

 

“Oi!” Jackie shouts at him as they enter Torchwood. She’s red in the face and panting a little as she jogs to keep up with his longer legs. “You bloody alien! Talk to me!”

 

He ignores her as he presses incessantly at the lift button, willing it to go faster. Jackie shoves her way through the lift doors, which close in Pete’s face. She just stands there in front of the doors panting, her glare making it’s way through the Doctor's’ thoughts.

 

“Erm,” he says shuffling a little, but the lift was small and there was nowhere to run or hide.

 

“Explain,” Jackie repeats.

 

“It’s kinda hard to-” he stops when her glare intensifies, his hand going back to pressing on the lift button. “I just assumed it was a malfunction of the Cannon because I landed on another planet far in the future.”

 

“You saying you didn’t actually land on a different planet?”

 

“No, no, I did land on The Library, I just thought R-,” he coughs. “That she couldn’t have been there, but what if she  _ was _ ? What if she found out a way to use the TARDIS? I never thought of that before.” He starts bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement. That tuft of blonde hair wasn’t just  _ familiar _ , it was  _ actually _ her!

 

“So you saying Rose could be anywhere, any _when_?” Jackie asks him throwing him off his excitement train.

 

“Oh,” he says as he plants his heels back down on the ground. “She’s gonna be  _ much _ much harder to track down. I’ll have to… hmm.” He frowns as he thinks of all the coding and calibrations he’ll have to do to the Cannon now.

 

The lift doors open into his lab and Jackie waddles over to one of the many wheelie chairs he has, sinking into it with a labored sigh. She angled herself carefully so that she can prop her legs up on a pile of Cybermen parts, shifting until she found a comfy spot and closes her eyes.

 

“Wake me when you got something,” she tells him before passing out.

 

He just goes over to the Cannon harness, trying to find the data matrix that chose his destination. If he could figure out how it chose to send him to that exact spot, maybe he could predict where he’d land next.

 

“Doctor? Jacks?” Pete’s voice comes from down the hall.

 

“In here Petey,” Jackie answers, shifting some more before going back to sleep.

 

“Doctor, mind telling me what that was all about?” he asks, his eyes going from where the Doctor was to where his wife was.

 

“It wasn’t the wrong place and time,” the Doctor explains between the screwdriver in his mouth.

 

After a solid minute of nothing but the Doctors fiddling with the Cannon harness and his wife's snoring, Pete gave up on getting more of an explanation. He just sighs before sitting himself in one of the chairs next to Jacks.

 

“This is gonna be a long night,” he sighs out, unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling the sleeves up before putting his feet up in the same bucket of Cybermen parts as his wife.

 

\--

 

“No no no no no no! Yes yes yes! No! Oh, yes!”

 

“Bloody alien,” Jackie mutters as she catches herself from falling off her chair. She had forgotten for a second that she was in his lab.

 

Unfortunately for her husband, he wasn’t as lucky as she in catching himself.

 

“Ugh,” he groans from the floor, not even moving to get up.

 

“Peter get off the floor and help me up, Tony is using my bladder as a trampoline,” Jackie tells him, her hands in front of her waiting.

 

“Yes yes yes! No! No no no n- yes!”

 

“Shut up!” Jackie yells at the Doctor, cranky from a bad night's rest and also from being five months pregnant. 

 

  
“Oh, good morning you two,” the Doctor replies cheerily, ignoring their glares. He tosses his sonic screwdriver up in the air and catches it, a grin splitting his face.

 

“Does he have an off button?” Pete whispers to Jackie.

 

“Not that I’ve found,” she replies, not even bothering to lower her voice, hand at her lower back as they walk away.

 

“Don’t you want to be here when I test it?” he asks them.

 

“Some of us have the pee, Doctor,” Jackie scolds. “When we get back.”

 

The Doctor just sinks back into his chair, a small pout on his face. He wanted to test if his theory was correct right now, though. But Jackie would literally kill all of his future regeneration's if he left without her coming back. No doubt she had already planned painful deaths for each future self.

 

Before he could dwell on it any further, Pete comes rushing back in, panic written on his face.

 

“Doctor! Come quick!” Pete shouts before he’s out the door again, stumbling as he does so. The Doctor is hot on his heels. If something has happened to Jackie, he’d never forgive himself.

 

“What’s happened?” he asks Pete as they run.

 

“She started having contractions!” Pete yells, his hands flying everywhere as he explains.

 

“This early?”

 

“They’re not contractions,” Jackie pants from where she’s leaning against the wall outside the bathroom. “They’re those brandon trix thingies.”

 

“Braxton-Hicks,” the Doctor corrects automatically before he goes over to place a hand on her belly.

 

“Yeah, whatever you call them, I’m  _ not _ in  _ labor _ !” Jackie says, her voice changing to shouting as she slaps at Pete’s hands.

 

The Doctor scans her with his sonic and looks at the results.

 

“Jackie’s right, she’s not in labor, but it’s not Braxton-Hicks,” he tells them as he looks at the readout.

 

“Then what was that?” Jackie demands, her hand tightening its grip on his.

 

“Erm,” the Doctor fumbles as he looks at her. 

 

“Well?”

 

“It seems you’ve contracted a virus from the year 3890,” he tells her, wincing as she crushes his hand in anger.

 

“I’ve  _ what _ ?!”

 

“Not to worry!” He says over her screech. “It’s curable!”

 

“What about the baby!?”

 

“No, he’s fine! He’s fine!” He soothes, or tries to. He’s not really great at the domestic in this body either.

 

“He?” Pete asks, a smile lighting up his face.

 

“You bloody idiot! We were waiting!” Jackie yells smacking him on the chest.

 

“Oh, dear,” the Doctor says, letting go of Jackie and backing up before she decided to go for his face. He rather liked his features where they were, thank you. “Sorry, Jackie,” he tells her, hands coming up in front of him.

 

“You better be!” she tells him. “Now, go and make me that cure!”

 

A lab tech who had came in early today saw the commotion in the hallway, stopped for a brief second, before heading back the way she came. She took out her phone and sent a text to the other lab techs, an SOS Jackie Tyler spotted by the labs text. Which made several think of quitting, and a few others turned their cars around to go back home.

**Author's Note:**

> Poor Doctor, lol. Sorry I kept interrupting him, I just didn't have a lot of Science Stuff for him to say that i haven't been pulling out of my magic hat, so i chose to just not let him finish his sentences. Whoops. Hopefully he's not too OOC. Part of the reason I wrote this AU was because I wanted to do a Doctor Who Hogwarts AU, but I didn't think I could write his voice. Let me know if it's good or not, and if you want me to flesh the Hogwarts AU out more. Please and Thank you!!


End file.
